Driving down Highway 49 a few weeks ago, passing through the little towns--wide places in the road, really--between Brinkley and Jonesboro, and looking over at the fields of cotton or corn or rice or whatever that was lining the highway . . . . The water was so high it was hard to tell in some spots just what was planted there.
A storm front had produced so much rain that week that water had backed up into people's yards and houses, and a couple of businesses had standing water covering their entire parking lots. Our first thought was: At least this isn't a drought, at least this ain't California.
Our second thought was: This'll help the aquifers.
On those regular occasions when Arkansas goes through a dry spell, the papers tend to publish stories about the underground lakes called aquifers, and how they're drying up. A lack of rain one summer, combined with all those farmers pumping groundwater onto their fields, and the experts start talking to reporters about how the aquifers are dying and how something needs to be done.
Just what should be done is anybody's guess. But the experts do Raise Concerns, as is their wont.
So when the eastern half of Arkansas was covered with water earlier this month, and as the water slowly seeped into the ground over the course of at least a week, surely that helped replenish the aquifers, right?
Right on cue, Arkansas' Newspaper hit the streets last Sunday morning. The headline: Delta groundwater lessens. The byline: Brian Fanney.
It may have been a wet July, but for a century farmers in the Delta have been taking more water out of the ground than nature can put back. A newly released report by the state says that if farmers keep on farming the way they're farming--and you know they will--then something's got to change. Either that, or eventually the groundwater will dry up.
Ecologists call it the Tragedy of the Commons. If there's a common resource used by a lot of people, and everybody just wants to take a little more of it for himself, eventually the commons will disappear--and everybody loses. The classic example is of shepherds grazing their animals in the same meadow, but the lesson applies to water, too.
The story in the paper said the big problems with the falling levels of underground water is right where you'd expect it: the Delta. Think about a triangle with Piggott at the top, going down to Little Rock in the middle, thence southeast to McGehee, and finally back up to Piggott. That's where a lot of the crops are, and that's where the aquifers are drying up.
In a state where 80 percent of the water is used for farming, this problem is only expected to get worse in the years to come: In 2010, the state used about 8.8 billion gallons of water a day. Demand for irrigation could push that number up to 10 billion gallons a day by 2050.
"I would like to find the person that could tell us how to get the individual water user to see their self-interest is tied up in the whole, but that's what's difficult," said Edward Swaim, a water manager for the state.
Yes, it's difficult.
But not impossible.
The state is supposed to come out with yet another plan this fall about reducing water usage. It'll no doubt focus on education and incentives, and Raise Concerns again. Then there'll be talk about more education and maybe even a task force and a public campaign. That kind of thing has been going on since memory runneth not to the contrary. Was it really 1939 when state government first started warning the public to take it easy on the water? But like other drinkers, we just can't seem to stop.
The state is building more reservoirs, hoping that ground-level lakes can help. But even those building the lakes say those projects won't be enough to make up for what's happening below the surface.
One county, however, could provide an example for the rest of the state to follow.
Back in the 1990s, the experts (again) warned folks in and around El Dorado that they were losing their groundwater. So a group of county residents went to the Ledge and got permission to set up a county water board--emphasis on county. Using local taxes, local control and local ideas, the county built the Ouachita River Alternative Water Supply Project, which diverted river water to industries in El Dorado, saving groundwater for farmers. Since 2004, water levels in the local aquifer have risen.
Yes, there are differences in the landscape of the Delta. But there's also more than one river running through it--plus The River, which is how the delta became the Delta in the first place. Maybe what's happened in Union County can't be duplicated in our Piggott/Little Rock/McGehee triangle, but it can be imitated.
What's important, what's become urgent, is that the state get started. Let's not have just more expert warnings and plans for Educating the Community. Surely we've had enough of that. At least since the 1930s.
Editorial on 07/18/2014